Custom hearing aid devices comprise a shell or ear mold custom fit and molded to the ear canal of each individual user. Such hearing aid devices are therefore quite expensive as well as time consuming to make. The receiver in such hearing aids is normally mounted on a tube that goes to a sound outlet facing the internal ear of the user and placed next to the opening of a vent or venting passage traversing the shell primarily placed to allow for reduction of the occlusion effect.
Unfortunately, the receiver not uncommonly needs to be repaired or replaced for instance due to a malfunction, in which case the shell of the hearing aid device is to be cracked open and built again. Also, current wax protection systems have proven insufficient to completely prevent ear wax from entering the receiver causing the receiver to fail and to be completely replaced. In prior art of ITE hearing aids, the receiver has only been replaceable from a rear portion or so-called faceplate portion of the aid where a substantially plane premanufactured plastic plate has been glued to the upper circumferential portion of the hearing aid shell so as to isolate the interior of the hearing aid from the surrounding environment. Accordingly, to replace the defective receiver, the faceplate portion of the aid had to be reopened with a substantial risk of damaging the customized ITE shell and/or mechanical or electronic components housed within the shell. This furthermore is both very expensive and takes a lot of time, and mechanical fitting problems may be difficult or impossible to avoid.
A further problem with custom hearing aid devices is the space concern as the two openings of the receiver (the sound outlet) and of the vent, respectively, unavoidably takes up a lot of valuable space contrary to the general objective of making the tip of the hearing aid as small as possible. The space and size requirements likewise impose strict limitations on the size of the opening of the receiver which may otherwise be desirable to make bigger or longer in order to improve the sound output in certain frequency intervals. For example, in some applications, the vent takes about as much space on the tip as the receiver and the aspect ratio of the receiver, width and thickness, are adapted to make space for the vent.